


fall into the light

by IShipItAllAndThenSome



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotionally Fraught & Meaningful Physical Contact, F/F, Kara Danvers Has Lost A Lot, Lena Luthor's Anti-Kryptonite Suit, Limited but like... limited sort of to both lena and kara but only vaguely, Longing/Pining (Freeform), POV Third Person, Post-Episode: s4e13 What's Wrong With Truth Justice and the American Way?, Present Tense, Protective Lena Luthor, Repressed Lesbian Antics, Sun Lamps, Supergirl And Lena Have A Strained Relationship But It's There And It Matters, The Claymore Satellite (Supergirl TV 2015), ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-25 22:30:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18172292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShipItAllAndThenSome/pseuds/IShipItAllAndThenSome
Summary: Supergirl cleans up the Claymore Satellite debris before it can land and cause any damage; Lena is waiting for her when she lands.





	fall into the light

**Author's Note:**

> literally entirely inspired by [this post](http://lenakluthor.tumblr.com/post/183571541052/why-have-lena-and-kara-never-spoken-or-anything) so like..... that's all. technically canon compliant bc this is after the suit happens and after the claymore thing but like.... Who Knows When!!! all u need to know is they are Soft

What goes up must come down, and what comes down must go back up, or else everything—everyone—below will suffer.

Supergirl goes back up. Painstakingly, at blinding speeds, she takes every piece of shrapnel and debris out of atmo and down into the desert, setting them softly down in the sand. The little pieces burn up right before her eyes, tinted by the display in her suit’s helmet, and she can’t help but remember watching other things burn.   
Krypton.

National City.

So many people she couldn’t save, so many crises she couldn’t avert. The wreckage during Myriad, after the Daxamite invasion, on every other Earth she’s visited.

A scrap of circuitboard dissolves into ash as it plummets past her nose, lands in her outstretched palm when she floats to a sudden stop.

It doesn’t even burn through the grips on her gloves.

Even if the world below her is imperiled, she’s always going to be protected.

Part of the dish whistles down and, with that same outstretched hand, Kara catches it, shepherds it down to rest on a dune.

“How many more?” she asks, one gloved hand pressed to her helmet’s side, activating her comm link.

“You’re almost done,” Brainy assures her. “You’ve reclaimed seventy three percent of the Claymore satellite’s mass, and sixteen percent burned up in atmospheric reentry. I believe all that remains is the satellite’s antenna, which should be positioned for reentry approximately eight thousand feet above downtown National City.”

“Cross streets?”

“One moment.”

Kara nods, even knowing he can’t see her, and launches back up into the sky, soaring towards the city at a steep incline so she can hover far above.

“East Cordova Street.”

“East? You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Brainy says nothing for a split second, and then: “L Corp is barely within radius of the impact, and Lena Luthor is not in her office at the moment. In case you were wondering.”

“Not wondering, at all. The signal just went fuzzy for a minute.”

“Oh. On my end everything is clear.”

“Good. It’s fine now, don’t worry about it. East Cordova and…?”

“72nd Avenue.”

Supergirl flies over, passing West Cordova and Bute Street without so much as a moment’s pause, and then rockets up at the corner of East Cordova and 72nd, waiting.

The antenna, as predicted, comes crashing towards her. She sees it coming from miles away, flies up to meet it high enough that the impact of its weight in her hands won’t send out a shockwave on the same axis as any high rises in the area.

There is a shockwave though, one that rattles through her bones. Her ears ring faintly, and she feels the grips on her gloves crack, little micro fissures forming along the lines of her joints. Curling around it like a full-body fist, she stays aloft, jetting back out towards the desert.

She should have seen this coming, should have calculated that the size of it would make the fairly lightweight piece of hardware unwieldy, make the impact of its center harder to handle when the ends caught up.

She can’t quite set it down easy once she reaches the desert; she crashes, harder than she should have, with it on top of her. She’s so dense, moving so fast, that she forms a crater on impact, glittering glass shards piercing up around her towards the shape of the setting sun.

“Kara, are you alright?”

“I’m fine!” She’s deep enough that the antenna isn’t on top of her, and she can just float out from under it without breaking a sweat. “Rough landing, but nobody’s hurt.”

“Good. Director Danvers is sending a team out to clean everything up; she said you should come back to base. The sun lamps are almost set up.”

“I’m _fine_ , Brainy.”

“Oh—“

Kara waits for him to come back online, floating aimlessly above the sand, watching the moon come up, slow and silvery.

“These are a new prototype. Supposedly more direct application of solar energies.”

“I didn’t know Alex was working on something like that,” Kara says, and tilts towards the city. She lands before Brainy can finish his response:

“She wasn’t.”

Lena is there, on the balcony. It’s late, of course, later than she ever stays at work, which is why she wasn’t in her office, but she’s—tense. Her arms are crossed, her jaw clenched, her hair down but dented from her office updo, her eyes tired.

Kara comes down, but Supergirl lands, emerging from the helmet, shedding her armor like old scales.

“It was damaged,” she says apologetically, “but not too badly. It should be fine the next time I need it, don’t worry.”

“No.” Lena uncrosses her arms, but clasps her hands in front of her stomach like she doesn’t know what else to do with themas she steps closer. “I can fix it while you get some rest.”

“Did you make the new sun lamps?”

“I just tinkered with the old ones. Made them more efficient. I was playing around with the idea of an input valve that connected to the suit, so if there’s ever another kryptonite burst, you can power up without risking contamination.”

“That’s smart.”

Lena smiles wryly, red lips twisting upwards in an off-center parabola that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Well, if you’re going to tinker on this, too, I should probably hand it over,” Supergirl says, and she initiates the suit’s collapse, floating up a little so the boots can shrink away without that weird sense of her feet falling our from under her. She lands, and it all disappears into the crest.

It’s a little dented, Supergirl realizes, when Lena reaches out and takes it from her hands, thumb skating into the groove left behind by the antenna’s impact. The tension is back in the set of her jaw, the line of her shoulders, the whiteness of her knuckles where she grips it like a lifeline.

Supergirl follows her to the med bay where the old sunbed was set up, hops up and lies back. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Lena walk over to the table where all the surgical equipment is laid out.

Watches her set the suit down.

Watches her press one hand into the damaged crest and the other over the knot of her lips, holding something in, pushing something back.

“Hey,” she says, and Lena turns to look at her. For all her angles, she’s practically transparent around the edges, fading in and out of view.

Uncertain.

“Come here.”

Lena does, heels clicking quietly. She stands at Supergirl’s bedside and grips the edge of the upholstered foam, paper protective sheet crinkling; her gaze is aimed down, maybe at the waxy paper crumples between her fingers, maybe at the crest, unmarred, rising and falling.

Supergirl sits up on her elbows, and takes Lena’s hand, gently. Like she doesn’t want to scare her off.

She guides Lena’s hand to her family crest and holds it there for a moment. Her heart beats steadily through flesh and bone and fabric, a vibration that travels up into Lena’s palm. She breathes, in and out, like high tide rolling over the shoreline of some cloud-covered beach, devoid of visitors.

And then she tangles their fingers together and lies back down, closing her eyes. Lena’s hand pushes against her sternum like she’s checking for bone bruising or breakage, but there’s nothing.

“I was protected,” Supergirl whispers, eyes closing, lashes fanning over her cheekbones.

She can hear the way Lena’s heart, unguarded, pounds an uncertain tattoo against her own sternum, her own ribs. She can feel the way Lena’s fingers curl back around hers of their own accord.

She can hear Lena’s loose hair falling in front of her shoulders as she bends at the waist, shifting on silk, ends brushing against paper, against skin.

“Lamp incoming,” Alex calls, and Lena’s hand is suddenly gone. She clacks across the lab in a few short steps and pulls the door open, holds the door, helps Alex reinstall the bulbs.

“Let me know if there are any problems,” she blurts, snatching up the suit. “I need to run some tests, make sure everything is still functioning correctly, if I can’t come up with something sturdier for the grips.”

“Oh—okay, then,” Alex says, brow furrowed. She turns back towards Supergirl on the bed, powers on the lamps.

They definitely feel different—stronger. Warmer.

Lena looks over her shoulder with one foot out the door, fingers curling around the battered crest protectively, and Kara can hear her heart stutter, can hear her breath catch in her throat. Her eyes shine wetly, and then she blinks, and turns, and leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> idk if the lenakluthor on Tumblr is the same lenakluthor as on here but if it's u.... this is for u...


End file.
